Modern XMPP project discussion - 2025-04-03

> In all desktop clients I have tested, there are severe issues involving screen readers that potentially make XMPP almost completely unusable by the blind Even CLI ones?

I've never tested, but I imagine CLI ones to be even worse

CLI software should be generally easier for blind people to use, shouldn't it?

Since there are nothing but text

GUI frameworks tend to have standard structured interfaces and APIs for accessibility software to navigate through them

CLI or TUI?

Terminal clients are just painting text all over the screen for different purposes, which a screen reader would have no sensible way to interpret

MattJ, blind people around me tend to favour TUI clients.

Maybe the “around me” part is important.

Maybe I underestimate modern screen readers

MattJ: There is no need to interpret stuff, unless the client uses some fancy pseudographic stuff

AlexKurisu, which client(s) are you thinking of that don't do that?

Just read what's on screen, that's all

How do you have multiple chats in parallel if you don't do "fancy" stuff?

MattJ: isn't there any `ed`-like XMPP client?

The last one I used like that was called imcom, and I'm pretty sure it's no longer developed

I did one once, but it may have been lost to a disk crash.

AFAIK, `ed`-like interfaces are perfect for blind people, especially the ones with braille terminals

I hear such "conversational UIs" are back in fashion :)

AlexKurisu, yes, I can believe that

Well, apparently gui clients on windows are often a lot easier to interpret by blind people. I assume the tooling around screenreaders for that is just more optimized.

Braille terminals are probably expensive and uncommon? ✏

> Braille terminals are probably expensive and uncommon? Windows has no support for them, AFAIK, so they are rare, so Windows has no support for them… It's a loop